Thursday, July 05, 2012

Seems every time there’s a booze-fueled convention…something good comes out of it!

We’ve got news for you Internet baseball watchers. The Hardball Times has just been acquired by our old buddy FanGraphs. “Acquisition” is such as bloodless, corporate word; it makes you think of downsizing, Bain Capital and synergies. But that’s not what’s really happening here, except maybe the synergy part.

Simply put, THT and FanGraphs are combining our financial, technical and publishing resources. Nothing much will change on either website. Both sites have their niches and writers and readership. We’ll still publish good stuff every day, as will Fangraphs. We already lean heavily on FanGraphs’ stats, and that certainly won’t change. We both have excellent pools of fantasy writers, and that won’t change either.

...I’m assuming you all know FanGraphs. FanGraphs first hit the tubes back in 2005, I think. Their founder (and my new boss) David Appelman even wrote for us for a while, as a way to publicize his new site. I invented LOB% for David because Ron Shandler wouldn’t let him use Strand Rate for his graphs (now you know how new baseball stats come to be). I’ve always assumed that David chose FanGraphs for the name of his site because I had already taken BaseballGraphs. So we’ve been close allies from the very beginning.

FanGraphs has since become a powerhouse the baseball world, known for its cutting-edge, in-depth baseball stats and lively, timely commentary. David has done a tremendous job of increasing his site’s features and traffic. We’ve continued to work together closely over the years as both sites have evolved. When THT decided to drop our stats, it was a natural to link to Fangraphs’ instead. And now we’ve formalized things.

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Seems like it would make sense for FanGraphs to simply drop the writing altogether, eventually, and focus on expanding and improving the stats and graphs.

You mean, they could bother creating some mainstream stat that isn't a laughingstock instead of WPA, fWar, etc? Maybe they could find the time to actually bother creating a stolen base WPA stat(one of the few things WPA is good for, and they don't bother to track it)

I didn't know they wrote articles?

Hopefully this means fangraphs will carry THT's database of stats, including(if they still have it) their versions of win shares. Neither site is particularly friendly when it comes to looking for stats, but Fangraphs is slightly better.

You mean, they could bother creating some mainstream stat that isn't a laughingstock instead of WPA, fWar, etc? Maybe they could find the time to actually bother creating a stolen base WPA stat(one of the few things WPA is good for, and they don't bother to track it)

I didn't know they wrote articles?

Hopefully this means fangraphs will carry THT's database of stats, including(if they still have it) their versions of win shares. Neither site is particularly friendly when it comes to looking for stats, but Fangraphs is slightly better.

WPA is a laughingstock? Huh. Last time I checked it as a fun little thing that had zero predictive value but that showed major momentum shifts in games and the guys responsible.

As for the rest of your post, I just don't agree with any of it. Fangraphs is a great for looking up stats. It's not so great for articles, as most of them are content farm style posts, and not particularly deep digging.

Hopefully this means fangraphs will carry THT's database of stats, including(if they still have it) their versions of win shares. Neither site is particularly friendly when it comes to looking for stats, but Fangraphs is slightly better.

As noted in the announcement, THT gave up its stats years ago & has been using Fangraphs for that ever since.

They're both great, but I use them in different ways. I have found Fangraphs useful because it shows current players major and minor league stats on the same page, along with their ZIPS projections. It's been a nice tool for playing fantasy. BB-Ref is unparalleled for viewing every detail of a player's career, grey and black ink, and digging into batted ball data, etc.

Sure, B-R is more extensive, but at least with Fangraphs I never had the urge to consult an owner's manual.

I find B-R easier to use than FanGraphs in that regard. FanGraphs used to have a nice little "glossary" option with their stats and a little pop up would tell you what the abbreviation stood for. Much of their stuff is pretty obvious but for those of us who don't automatically remember what "Z-Swing%" vs. "O-Swing%" is it's nice not to have to look it up every time.

Sure, B-R is more extensive, but at least with Fangraphs I never had the urge to consult an owner's manual.

You've got this backwards. At B-R you can hover your mouse over an abbreviated stat header and it gives you a description of the stat. At Fangraphs it doesn't even tell you the name of the stat. Like, what the hell is, to pick a random metric, Rdrs? With minimal effort at B-R I know it's "BIS Defensive Runs Saved Above Average. The number of runs above or below the average player was worth based on the number of plays made. This number combines the Rpm, Rbdp, Rbof and Rbcatch numbers into a total defensive contribution." At Fangraphs I'm left to look that up on my own.